Outside Context
by Thrythlind
Summary: The Fifth Grail War is starting and Caster has just been summoned. Only this summoner is quite what the Witch of Betrayal was expecting. In fact, she wasn't quite what anybody was expecting.
1. Chapter 1

_Okay. My knowledge of Nasuverse is not all-encompassing, so there will be mistakes though I will try to be close. Though I don't know how often I can write fanfic, and not sure when inspiration will strike me on my other fanfiction stories (I get to thinking about Divine Blood and turn back to the novels and original shorts, for example), but this gives me something fun to write to complement the work. (though I have a for-hire deadline this month, so don't expect too much)_

_Saeko is an actual anime character, and she's using names connected to said character. Anybody familiar with me can probably make an easy guess as to who she is... One thing to note, she won't be learning powers from different places...accumulating equipment yes, but not powers, I'm judging that what made her immortal (which is also from an anime) froze her condition so she can't adapt her body to learn any new power sources. That came, however, in the fifth or sixth world she went to after leaving home._

_Eventually, I hope Saeko to end up the mentor character with Shirou taking hero position again. But since she's the element of change up here, I'm starting with her. As implied, this is likely to go out of Nasuverse._

_To any fans, sorry, I REALLY wanted to do the massive armament of weapons against Heracles._

* * *

The woman lived in Chicago at least for the moment. Life was good, in a manner of speaking. Her home was both luxurious and innocuous. From the outside it looked like any of a number of other buildings in the city. Once upon a time it had been a hotel owned by a disgusting man named H. H. Holmes. It had been riddled with death traps and secret passages when she first came to the scene, but that was in the past. Now those same chambers had been turned to her own use.

Holmes spirit had been lingering in the building, but that was easily handled. She'd had a wealth of knowledge to use against the man, even though his crimes and ghost had gone unknown and undetected for almost a century.

She was Japanese, in her early twenties to all appearances and she had long black hair, strikingly luxuriant, and wore a beautiful black kimono as she strode through a wide hall stacked endlessly with photographs and portraits that showed what seemed to be her or her relatives in a number of exotic places. The woman stopped in the middle of them all and twisted to take in each and every one of them as a soft sob worked out of her throat. She lifted a hand to wipe at her eyes and compose herself before moving on to the next room where a simple ritual space was set up.

"Death is lighter than a feather, duty is heavier than a mountain," she whispered, knowing that the path she was about to step on to was going to abandon that credo. Though she found it questionable whether she had ever truly lived it.

Bending down, she drifted her hand through the golden curls of the item under her hands. She glanced aside toward the clock, she was cutting it close. In thirty minutes the ritual would be performed as normal and she would be left out of events. This wasn't the first time that she had tried this sort of thing, and she'd always seemed to back off as it came to the kickoff.  
She'd leave, go looking for something to do, set up a new life, and eventually be back to this point.

"No, it's time for this to end," she whispered determinedly.

Standing up she walked across to a table and looked down at a brightly colored art book displaying diagrams of arcane circles. Nodding to herself she turned back to the fleece and then stepped over to grab a simple looking blue gem etched with the roman numeral XVIII.

Silently she, focused until the gem began to glow and then she quietly intoned the words of the ritual that she had researched, hoping that her research was accurate to her position.  
Her answer came in a flash of light that quickly coalesced into the humanoid form of a woman wearing ornate black and purple robes, the top of her face covered by a black hood lined with gold.

"I, Medea of Colchis, do swear to fight in the grail war at your side," the woman said with a bow. "May we be victorious in the war to come and achieve our hearts desires. May I have the name of my Master?"

"One thing first," the woman in the kimono said stepping forward and stretching her arms out wide. "Get it over with."

The summoned Medea cocked her head to the side, looking confused as to what her summoner might be talking about. Her Master smirked a bit and turned an arrogant expression toward her.

"Are you not the Witch of Betrayal?" she demanded harshly. "Get. It. Over. With. I won't stop you."

"You want me to betray you?" the witch smirked. "Already. Is this some manner of test?"

"I've said it once," the woman in the kimono returned sharply. "Take your blade in hand, free yourself from the contract. There's two tickets for Japan on the desk behind me. You don't need me. Show me you truly are the witch of betrayal!"

A shrill, piercing laugh sounded out from the woman's mouth for a two seconds before jarring pain slashed down through her body when the jagged weapon was forced down into her body. A discharge of power slipped through the woman's body as a disappointingly familiar sensation washed over her...and then she crumpled to the ground.

Medea sneered down at the body as she moved to clean her blade. What manner of luck she had that her summoner was suicidal. It would have been much easier to have a Master for the Grail War, but the woman had been right, there ways around it. Medea wandered through the room for a moment, taking into the absurdity of it all. Alot of the things didn't look anything like a what belonged in a magus's workshop.

A book on the desk attracted her attention and she turned toward it seeing the summoning circle drawn in colorful detail. She fingered the paper and realized it was a modern material of some sort. Turning the page she gasped as she found a stylized picture of herself complete with description of her history and powers and a cursory description of the Rule Breaker.

Turning the next page, she found another picture billed as Berserker and showing the image of a massive man that seemed familiar.

Closing the thin book sharply, she took in the title. "Fate/complete material - Volume III. World Material. What is this?"

Medea's hands started to shake as she looked around the room with a new perspective. Then the sound of a sharply indrawn breath brought her to look back and watch as the blood flowed backwards into the dead body of her former Master. The woman sighed softly and spoke up, "I had hoped Rule Breaker would work. But I'll have to do things the hard way it seems."

"What manner of creature are you?" Medea demanded cautiously as the woman stood up.

"Human," the woman explained. "Terribly, terribly human."

"Then I suppose the next question is who are you?" Medea asked.

The question seemed to make the formerly dead woman stop and think for a moment. "For now, I've been using the name Saeko Rothery. You probably wouldn't know my real name. It is recorded in no histories of note."

"A name is one thing," Medea noted. "But tell me who you are that I should be asked to trust one who named me witch twice."

"Because I am someone else who was named witch, Medea," Saeko noted. "I am someone else who was written to be a villain and for whom many could see nothing else that I could be."

"You think your story compares to mine then?" Medea wondered.

"Before I was this?" Saeko asked casually. "Not even close. My story was small. light-hearted. There was no death save once. Our causes and arguments were petty. Our worries minor. And our lives were blessed though we couldn't see it. I was but a minor player in it with only a limited role."

She sighed wistfully.

"I sunk into real evil only after I left my story," she added harshly. "And without anything like your excuse. I suppose it's possible I haven't died yet because I haven't yet finished atoning. If that's so, I assume I'll fail."

"And now you desire to win the Grail and have it grant your wish," Medea reasoned.

"My desire is the only wish that the Grail is truly capable of granting," Saeko scoffed.

"You wish to die," Medea noted.

"I reason that a malevolent device holding the accumulated evil of a world and capable of planetary genocide should be capable of killing me once and for all," Saeko explained icily, she moved to the book holding the secrets of this universe and sighed as she touched it. "I can give you ways to live on in this world, Medea. I can show you how to step past Jason's lies. I can show you secrets from a thousand worlds. I can show you how to be more than a hero from a story. But I'm afraid that I've already stolen the endings that the books show as possible. Just by being here I've changed things. If Rule Breaker had worked, it might have gone the same..."

She shook her head and glanced back over her shoulder.

"Are you ready to accept the contract again?" Saeko asked. "Or do we go our separate ways, become competitors?"

"Let us see how things proceed," Medea returned calmly.

"Then I offer myself as Master to Medea of Colchis," Saeko Rothery said eagerly. "I shall be your blade and your shield. I am your monster. Through me you shall have knowledge of escaping this life and living on. And, in return, I ask from you that you do no evil at least until our contract is ended."

"This might be hard to do without killing," Medea warned.

"I said do no evil," Saeko noted with a grim, cheerless smile. "I never said anything about not killing."

* * *

Saeko kneeled on the ground and looked over the equipment that was going to determine how this fight was going to go. The roll of cloth in front of her had several weapons that she hoped were strong enough to do what needed to be done.

First was a tiny thing that looked rather like a novelty squirt gun. It easily fit in Saeko's own small hands. In fact it was rather small enough that it was a bit awkward to hold. It also wasn't exactly an instant kill weapon so much as it was a massive damage weapon. Still, it went into her sleeve and vanished.

"By your tome, this Heracles as he is when sunk into the depths of Hera's inflicted madness," Medea lectured...Caster, Saeko corrected herself. "He will not be someone we can reason with."

As Caster spoke, the Japanese woman picked up what looked rather like a flash-light and grimaced. It had taken her a very, very long time to master the use of this weapon in way that she could avoid hurting herself or others on accident. Even now, given that she wasn't the sort of person the weapon had been designed for, she wondered if it would be enough as she clipped it to her belt.

"A Heracles lacking reason is one I can deal with," Saeko assured her. "It's when he's thinking that he's beyond my ability."

The next weapon was one of her disappointments. She picked it up and stared at it. A long barrelled colt revovler built sometime around 1835. The barrel was engraved with the English line "I will fear no evil and there was a pentacle etched in its grip and several bullets stood next to it which she loaded one by one.

"I suppose I'm one of the five things," she muttered to herself.

"What five things?" Caster asked.

"Doesn't matter," Saeko responded with a shrug as she placed the colt in a shoulder holster.

"I see. You have fought Heracles before then?" Caster asked.

Next to that were seven arrows coated with a dark substance. This was the first weapon that the woman planned to use on Heracles. Aside from his sheer strength, the stories had placed what stained these arrows as one of the chief weapons Heracles used, and also the item that had brought his death in the past.

Unfortunately the nature of her life meant that poisons meant nothing to her.

She set the arrows into a quiver on her back. Six of these arrows were of a common sort, but the seventh was a large, black arrow crafted of some sort of metal that Caster was not familiar with.

"Fought him, or a version of him, twenty...thirty...thirty-seven times," Saeko noted. "Fought beside him thirteen times. Married him once."

Two more guns, one white and one black, were picked up then and settled at her side. Those were copies, of a sort, made specifically for her by another old loved one. Like some of the other weapons, they weren't exactly instant kill weapons but given the things she had killed with the pair she hoped that she could at least take one of Berserker's lives.

"You married Heracles?" Caster noted with a blink. "How did that work out?"

"Better than expected," Saeko commented. "Hera only tried to kill me once."

Saeko picked up a scroll with an intricate notation upon it. This had been a trick to get. She'd only managed to get by lucking upon a pair of other travelers in the same place at the same time. Her body didn't actually produce the energy needed to activate the scroll, but it was keyed to her DNA so all she had to do was bleed on it in the right place to trigger the inherent energy to release. The scroll went up her sleeve, vanishing wherever the tiny gun had gone.

"Of the times you've fought him, how many times have you won?" Caster asked.

"Three times," the Japanese woman noted. "Never permanently. Aside from just living longer."

This brought a rueful smile to the Colchean priestess's face. "And you say this is our first target?"

"The girl is our first target," Saeko corrected. "Or rather what she carries. If I could get her away from the giant without him tracking her down, I would. If he were able to think, I'd tell him my plan and hope he'd play along. As it is, I'm going to have to dissipate him."

She picked up a rolled up leather whip and rubbed her hands along it before turning to look at Caster.

"Do you think a rage-overwhelmed Heracles counts as a creature of darkness?" she asked.

"I would bring with you everything you can," Caster warned. "At the very least you'll buy time to give me a chance to strike."

"Good point," Saeko nodded as she put the whip into her jacket and turned to what looked like a simple cane. She brushed her hands along its edges and sighed.

"I can tell there is occult significance to several of these items," Caster noted. "Where did you acquire them?"

"Here and there, from places that no longer need them," Saeko noted. "This one. This shikume-zue...I won't be using it."

"Didn't I tell you that you should bring every weapon that might give you an edge," Caster lectured. "I can feel the power emanating off that weapon."

"It is not so simple," Saeko noted. She shook her head and the cane disappeared into her jacket.

That just left two more items. The first was a simple shield formed of a round metal and painted with a series of concentric red, white and blue circles with a white star at the center. This Saeko slipped over her shoulder opposite the quiver. Then she reached down to pick up the bow with which she would deliver the arrows.

"I'm ready," Saeko determined.

"Then let's begin, Master," Caster said.

Saeko nodded and started running before taking a running leap and landing gracefully on the roof of the first building she reached. Caster was swiftly enough at her side, studying her Master carefully. "I haven't even reinforced you and yet you travel so well."

"The humans where I come from are capable of such things," she explained. "With proper training. Still, to hurt a Heroic Spirit, I'll need to trust you." She emphasized the word trust pointedly.

"Touchy aren't we?" Caster asked.

"Caster, remember that I am very familiar with the way evil thinks," she commented.

"You still haven't taught me anything so it is in my interest to keep you alive," the Servant reminded her.

Ahead of them, the sky lit up in a blast of terrible fire. In another situation, Caster would have been scrying on the scene to watch what had transpired. However, now she already knew approximately what was going on. If any of her Master's books were correct, then she knew what direction events were heading.

But they were about to strike to drastically change the line of events. Caster's mind drifted casually towards the thought of the man, Kuzuki, that she apparently would fall in love and then die with. That concept was troubling to her since she had never found love to be anything but a lie. Yet these books said that had things gone as they should have, then she would have met this man.

Saeko was genuinely distraught that she had ruined that meeting, but Caster scoffed at that. The woman also wanted to die, so of course she would see no problem in the fact that both this man and Caster were dead at the end of the story. Clearly it was better that they both should live, was it not?

As soon as the graveyard exploded, Saeko started traveling on a line to give her a point of interception as their quarry returned to their home base. Caster let herself drift back further from the well-armed Japanese woman. The weapons she had just been packing were hardly the only ones she had. A surreptitious scanning had revealed that, by some trick or another, the woman literally had hundreds of weapons of differing varieties on hand. Unfortunately, they were almost all mortal weapons and mostly not usable in this circumstance.

Saeko stopped on the roof of building and looked down the road towards where Caster could sense the massive energy that was Berserker heading for them. Caster's Master turned to look towards her and gave a nod. The magician reached out and flooded her prana into Saeko's body. The woman shivered and shook her head at the rush of power and looked at her hand curiously before turning to her task.

As the Japanese woman pulled back on the bow for the first time, Caster pulled further back into the air, ready to put distractions in the strong-man's path. That was her first role, support. Then, she would become the weapon once Saeko took on the fool-hardy plan to engage Berserker in melee.

The first arrow streaked through the night sky at almost super-sonic speeds.

* * *

Illysaviel frowned as she considered the occurrence at the graveyard. Tohsaka's Archer was rather much more impressive than she had counted on. She actually thought the man had managed to take some of Berserker's lives with that shot. Still, at least the one who had stolen her father from her was punished.

"Well, I suppose I should have finished Tohsaka right there," the little girl said. "But we can deal with that later, right Berserker?"

The giant man simply grunted and Illysaviel smiled happily as she looked up toward the Heroic Spirit. Which was when she saw the simple black arrow strike his skin and bounce off. Blinking in confusion she glanced down toward the shaft, wondering whether Tohsaka's archer meant some sort of offense. Then she leaned down to look over the item and saw the black tarry substance coating the tip.

"Berserker!" she snapped sharply, ducking behind the large man. "Find this archer!"  
And then her Servant charged up towards the direction of the arrows.

* * *

Saeko watched the arrows fly to her target as he charged in their direction and grimaced as she reached for her last shaft.

"Arrow," she said seriously. "Black arrow. I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and I always have recovered you. I had from the Lake and that from the Dragon. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!"

She released and watched as the shaft sliced through through the air in a humble but sure path straight down toward the mountain of a man growing ever closer. And then it hit slamming into Heracles shoulder and drawing forth a roar of sheer pain as the hydra venom streamed into his veins.

Almost instantly, he rallied and continued in his charge on her position.

Saeko dropped down from her perch on the building to step down into the street and pull the old colt out, sighting down the barrels as the ancient hero came closer. She cocked back the hammer and pulled the trigger. The bullet streaked forward and slammed into Heracles, blue flashes of light erupted throughout the Heroic Spirit's body as he staggered and moved to shake off the attack.

Saeko fired the Colt a second time and watched as, sure enough, the bullet seemed to simple ricochet off the now angered Berserker. He swooped in, swinging his axe club at her. She dodged partially aside, letting the axe sever much of the bottom half of her left arm as she brought the scroll out with her right and whipped it through her blood as quickly as she could. The trigger on the seal registered her and proceeded to unleash what was sealed within the parchment.

Heracles glared as he turned to look in time to come eye to eye with the image of a flaming skull. The rage-maddened madman recoiled briefly as the weight of all his sins screamed down on him and sapping his strength and will until his God Hand revived him and the skull winked out.

Saeko darted away, her left arm flowing back into place, gaining some distance then as she pulled out the tiny gun and pulled the trigger. The strenght of the blast threw her backwards even as she saw the explosion erupt across Berserker's body. She rolled back to her feet and watched as he came charging at her. She fired the tiny weapon again, once again sending her flying backwards and generating an explosion against Berserker's form.

Growling loudly, the giant threw his axe club across the scene. Saeko was standing up as the weapon careened into her, splitting her asunder and sending her down to the ground. She was already reforming when Berserker reached her and tried to stomp down on her body, growling angrily as the blood, bone and flesh flowed around his foot and formed back into her.

As soon as she was conscious again, she pointed up at the giant with the gun and fired, feeling her bones crack and organs crush as the backblast forced her down into the ground, but sending Berserker stumbling back just long enough for her to roll up to her feet and pulling the two demonic guns out of their holsters.

Saeko leaped up into the air firing a blast as she twisted about to avoid the swing of Berserker's recovered weapon. The woman landed atop the weapon and continued firing her guns almost point blank into Heracles' face. The Berserker whipped the blade out from under her feet before she could leap off of it and grabbed hold of her head before he smashed her down into the ground repeatedly.

* * *

Illysaviel watched in shock as the assassin continued to battle Berserker. Her Servant had defeated the woman several times already, but she seemed as ever resilient as Heracles himself. Everytime the giant killed her, she just seemed to get up again. The surprise and curiosity of the matter held her back from moving at first, but now she was interested, and concerned.

Whatever weapons this woman had, she'd managed to kill Berserker at least twice, possibly as many as three times. Even now, she was recovering from her thrashing and firing those black and white guns into his body such that the clearly empowered bullets rippled over the Servant's body like rain drops in a typhoon. Those weapons were working up to take another of her servant's lives.

The little homonculus started working up to casting a spell to immobilize this woman when everything seemed to start to grow fuzzy around her. She stumbled and looked to the side catching sight of a vaguely smiling woman wearing ornate orbs before everything turned black.

* * *

Kuro and Shiro's bullets had stopped penetrating and Saeko leaped out of the way of another strike as she holstered them. The whip came out then and she lashed it out over her head cackling madly simply for the sentiment of it. The alchemical whip erupted into magical flames and a tongue of flame whipped towards Heracles and washing over him with seemingly no effect.

Saeko took a leap, trying to give herself distance again, but knew she'd failed when she came back to consciousness to find her head re-uniting with her neck in mid air. She hit the ground roughly, the pain quickly disappearing, and rolled again, this time under Heracles' legs. She panted as she leaped up onto his back and wrapped the neck around his throat.

The rage filled monster that ruled the ancient hero simply reached up and threw Saeko across the street sending her through a wall like a bullet. She died again on the way through and was barely able to wake up and get out before the building collapsed in on itself.

This was why she could handle a berserk heracles. All he did was keep trying to kill her and she just kept coming back together. A thinking heracles would have immobilized her and ended the fight that way.

Still, it looked like the sentimental favorite wasn't going to be a use this time so she stashed the weapon and leaped in retreat again as the monster came after her. Saeko reached back and slipped the shield forward, fitting it around her left arm before reaching for that flash-light looking thing with her right.

The axe sword came careening down to meet the red, white and blue shield and stopped there without shifting Saeko in the slightest. Then a whirring noise accompanied the sight of a long beam of blue light whipping out from the cynlinder in her hand. She lashed out, mindful of the weightlessness of the blade and found it stopping against the magical edge of the axe-club.

Heracles kicked out, foot slamming into the shield and again stopping cold at contact with the metal. Saeko retaliated by slashing out with her strange energy sword, cutting half way through Heracles' leg on one swing. The huge man stumbled forward on his injured leg, Saeko darting again around behind him and slamming the energy weapon down into the base of his neck.

The ancient hero shuddered briefly before she removed the energy blade, and then all his injuries started to heal. Shrugging violently, he threw Saeko office his back and turned ponderously towards her. The man was fast, very damn fast, Saeko had to admit that as he slammed a fist down into the shield, forcing her to stay huddled at the ground a moment longer.

Then the sky lit up as a barrage of light beams tore into Heracles body, seeming tearing him to pieces only for them to stop working and the wounds begin to heal. Lashing forward, Saeko drew her energy blade across the man's chest only for it to merely scrape across to her chagrin.

The energy blade snapped closed and returned to her belt as a fire cascaded down over both her and Heracles. The pain was intense, but nothing she hadn't felt before. When it passed, her tactical gear was seared and almost totally ruined, but both she and Heracles were already coming back to health. The massive fist that sent her flying backwards was certainly proof of that.

The Japanese death-seeker was standing before the giant could reach her and placing the shield up in the way of his attack. She tried to take a series of measured, directed steps backward, finding it difficult with the way the man was thrashing about and destroying large swaths of terrain. There was some leeway in what she was doing, but it was a close thing, especially if she was going to keep her cool.

A bolt of lightning slammed down from above, staggering Heracles again and Saeko made a point of not looking up towards where Caster was laying down the artillery. There was no way she was going to bring the single-minded killer's attention to the one doing the real damage right now. She focused instead on keeping to her path and blocking the blows coming from the monsters of a man.

Without the shield this would be impossible. She'd have been tossed about like a ragdoll and would have to start over each and every time. And even after however many years, she was not as good at this as the one who had taught her. It was an aggravating, bone-jarring trip to the center, but she got there. She got there cold and he got there hot.

"Hiryu shoten ha!"

Suddenly the world turned into a mass of swirling wind and dust with her at the center. She gaped wide-eyed at the sheer power of the tornado that Heracles had produced as the Heroic Spirit was tossed skywards amidst the debris being torn from the walls around the Japanese woman wielding the red, white and blue shield. Soon enough, however, the tornado lost its momentum and the Heroic Spirit slammed down to the ground on his back.

Saeko didn't think the tornado had taken a life, it never quite seemed to unless you were really good. But it did give her a chance to lunge outward and swing the shield down into the Berserker's face as hard as she could, save a dent into Heracles' forehead. The next blow from the shield did nothing as Saeko was grabbed and quite literally torn limb from limb and scattered across the field of the battle.

Her head came in contact with her torso in time for her to register the slashing magical wind taking Heracles' head off and then watching it slowly regrow as her own limbs were pulling back into her. How many times was that now? How close were they?

She struggled to her feet, literally, and slowly pulled herself to standing in time to see Heracles starting to move. Glancing aside, she saw the shield lying twenty feet away where her left arm had first landed. Taking a deep breath and hoping that Caster's reinforcement gave her what she noted, she charged forward.

"Dokuja tanketsu sho!" she roared, slamming her tiny palm ridicuously into Heracles' chest. With the force of Caster's reinforcement behind her, she felt her hand just barely succeeding at forcing it's way through the skin and rib cage straight to the Heroic Spirit's heart. And then

Saeko pulled her hand back, staring hopefully. Because if that wasn't enough, she hoped that Caster had something more to add to the fight.

"Why do you show fear, Traveler?" the great man spoke slowly as Saeko watched him fading.

"You are ever where you need to be. Now is no different."

"No, this is my choice," she protested. How did this Heracles know of her in any case? She hadn't ever actually encountered a Heracles from this family of worlds. "The sword didn't bring me here."

"Also true," the Berserker said with a rueful grumble before he finally fell over, the mad light fading from his eyes.

Caster alighted at her side, carrying the sleeping body of Illysaviel in her arms.

"Well, Master," she noted. "I must say that I am impressed. I thought you mentioned you could do no spells."

"Those weren't spells," Saeko protested, taking a breath. "Let's collect my weapons and get out of here."

"Indeed."

* * *

"And what is your plan for this little girl?" Caster asked, indicating where Illysaviel was sleeping on the table in the center of the abandoned sewer chamber.

Saeko looked to her and gave that same grim, cheerless smile as she slipped a hand into her jacket and pulled out holding a massive golden cup that appeared corroded and stained. This she set on the table next to the sleeping girl. Saeko looked at her carefully and then up at Caster.

"I thought magi couldn't be hypnotized like this," she noted.

"These modern magi are not up to my level," Caster assured her. "Is that the original Grail?"

"The corrupted Lesser Grail from the third war before it was damaged," Saeko confirmed.

"Just not from this timeline."

"And now what do you plan to do with it?" Caster asked.

Saeko reached into her jacket again and pulled out a small, fluffy feather that seemed to be made out of multi-colored flame. Then pointed to Illysaviel. "Take Rule Breaker, cut her heart out, intact, and put it into the cup."

Caster straightened, confused and surprsied at the turn of events.

"Seriously, Master," she noted with a trace of humor. "I thought we were doing no evil."

"Mine is a creative destruction," Saeko noted with a dark chuckle of her own. "Be quick, I want her to feel no pain about this."

"Right away, Master."

Caster drew forth her dagger and, as asked, stabbed it down into the girls body. The child gasped in her sleep and almost awoke but then stilled with no more sound. Carving the heart out took barely a minute for the Noble Phantasm, even as awkward a weapon as it was. She turned toward the cup and set the stolen organ into it even as Saeko darted forward to slap the fiery feather down onto Illysaviel's head.

The ancient magus stared in surprise as the corpse shuddered and a fire swept over it. The fire burned briefly in many colors and did not consume the girl's body, but instead seemed to be set it right, as if it were burning the wounds away and leaving healthy flesh in their place.

And, as the last flame swept away, Illysaviel's began to breath calmly in and out.

"Another of your secrets of a thousand worlds?" Caster asked.

"Exactly so," Saeko agreed.

* * *

Illysaviel came to consciousness feeling lighter than she had for a very long time. It was...discomforting in a way, as if something had been ripped out of her. But despite that, she still felt better than she ever had. Glancing around, it was quite obvious that she wasn't in the castle and then she remembered the ambush from the night before.

"Berserker!" she snapped sitting up. "Berserker, where are you?"

"Back on the throne of heroes," a woman's voice noted.

Illysaviel turned toward the sound and saw a elegant woman kneeling seiza as she drank tea and looked toward her. There was an amulet about her neck holding a bluish gem with some sort of engraving that Illya didn't have the best view of. "He's...dead?"

"Indeed, regretfully so," the woman noted. "Though I think I might reiterate to you what I said to my Servant later. Had Heracles been able to think clearly, well there's no way I could have beaten him."

Illysaviel winced slightly at the implicit reprimand.

"And I suppose now you plan to wait for me to fill up with the Grail," Illysaviel snapped, angry that she had lost so easily.

"Actually, I've already had Caster remove that burden from you," Saeko responded.

"You lie! There's no way to remove the Lesser Grail from me without killing me!"

"Do you not feel different, little girl?" Saeko asked in a lilting, half-mocking tone.

Illysaviel growled and crossed her arms but refused to answer.

"Now it is just a matter of what to do about you," the Japanese woman commented.

The girl turned about with a snap and stared her captor down.

"So that is your game, seeking to study a real Einzbern homonculus and find out my family secrets," she accused, anger covering her newest worry.

"I have my own methods to craft homonculi, thank you," Saeko responded dryly, as if partially affronted by the idea that Illysaviel was suggesting. "No, the problem is otherwise. I cannot simply let you go for various reasons, the most pressing of which being that you are still a target."

"If you were so concerned about me being a target, you wouldn't have removed my protection," Illya reminded her.

"Berserker with the mad enhancement is an ineffective bodyguard, and one of your enemies is armed well for dealing with such divine beings as Heracles," Saeko noted with a wave of her hand.

"Then you plan to keep me here as a prisoner?" Illysaviel suggested.

"Equally dangerous," Saeko noted. "You are still a Master and there is still a Servant un-summoned. But it's almost the only option we have."


	2. Chapter 2

_Rather short, though I also slightly expanded Saeko and Illysaviel's conversation in chapter 1. In any case, Saeko is an actual anime character, but given this is that character after a period likely in excess of ten or fifteen thousand years, she might as well be an original character. It's getting past time for me to sleep...work tomorrow...and I ended at a good couple of points...so I'll go ahead and post this. _

_Also, I have never seen Code Geass. Saeko's immortality is partially from one anime. What is preventing that immortality from being ended is something else.  
_

* * *

Saber watched as Shirou left the house for the school with more than a little trepidation. Her Master seemed to be wanting to do everything on his own. He didn't seem to understand at all that the beings he was toying with were not human in terms of power. Archer was nowhere to be seen either and that struck her as either a plot by Rin or by the Servant himself such as when Gilgamesh had betrayed his Master in the previous war.

Actually, now that she considered the matter, that Master had born the same family name as Rin did.

It might be technically against Shirou's orders, but she decided that there was some logic to scouting out the area around the Emiya estate and seeing just what had changed in the last ten years. They'd seen Lancer, Archer, Berserker and she herself was Saber. There remained three more Servants to find and identify. They had also yet to find a master to match to Lancer.

If Shirou needed her, he would use the Command Seals. If he needed her and didn't call her, then there wasn't much that she could do, something she was reluctant to admit to. In the mean time, she might as well make herself useful.

So she was walking through the streets. At least, in full day like this, Lancer was going to be less of a problem for them. But that left all the rest, including Archer in her opinion. Even if Rin was trustworthy, that Servant wasn't.

Saber paused her thoughts as she turned a corner and looked at the scene before her. It was immediately obvious that a battle had taken place there. Entire blocks of stores and buildings looked like they had been destroyed. She glanced around and noted sign of gunfire on some of the remaining walls and glanced at places where the charge of one of the participants had been stalled or even stopped occasionally. Lightning and fire had touched the ground in at least two places, as had a cyclone and other forces that could only have been magecraft.

The King of Knights tensed and shifted aside as she felt a presence forming behind her. She watched as Archer materialized into being, standing as straight, calm and disapproving as he ever did. He looked out over the scene with a nod.

"So this is what's left of the reason for our truce," he noted with a cynical grimace.

"You're saying Berserker is defeated," Saber asked sharply.

"That is what the battlefield tells me," Archer returned. "Certainly you are wondering something similar."

"And is this your work then?" she asked cautiously.

"No," Archer admitted. "There is a strange scent to this. Something not entirely…usual." He frowned in consideration then. "I'll be suggesting to Rin that we leave off this truce. I'm guessing you'll do the same for your Master?"

"You seem quite eager to turn aside from the pact our Masters made with each other," Saber noted in her own tone of disapproval.

"The agreement is unwise on both their parts," Archer reasoned. "You are aware of it as I am. Rin is no less soft-hearted and naïve than your Master. She needs to be guided in the right direction. But your Master is a hopeless fool with ideals no less fantastic than your own. In that regard you work quite well together."

Saber's lips firmed together in a small line as her eyes narrowed. "The Tohsaka have poor judgment in their Servants."

She turned sharply and stepped briskly away from the Archer, once again thinking how very much like Gilgamesh she was starting to find him to be. For his part, Archer remained silent at the rebuke and turned to look at the site of the previous night's battle.

He waited until she was gone before looking over the scene and narrowing his eyes. Caster, it had to have been Caster who had engaged in this battle. The sheer power of the magecraft involved allowed for no one else. But who was the magus this time around, and who was the magus's master?

* * *

Shirou smelled it almost immediately as soon as he crossed the gates of the school. Smell wasn't exactly the right word for it, but it was the closest way he had of describing what he was feeling. The scent around him was thick and grotesquely heady with a somewhat sickly-sweet smell like rotting candy soaked in congealed blood.

This wasn't the first time he'd smelled something strange, especially the last couple of days. But nothing quite so blatant and...vulgar as this. Just what the hell was this and why didn't anybody else seem to notice?

He watched as the other kids walked past him, chatting unconcerned as if that disgusting scent didn't hang over everything.

"It's a bounded field," Rin's voice said behind him as she stepped forward. "I feel it, too."

"You're thinking this is another Master?" Shirou asked. "What are they trying to do?"

"You remember when I told you that a Servant can drain the lives of of people in order to increase their own power?" Rin asked.

"You don't mean to say..." the young Emiya started.

"The school is being set up as one mass living sacrifice," Rin confirmed darkly. "That's my impression anyway."

"That's terrible, there has to be something we can do," Shirou responded.

"Don't worry, there's no way I'm letting this happen," she assured him with a confident smile. "This thing isn't finished yet. We can at least slow it down by finding the anchor points and shut them down."

"And how would we find these anchors?" Shirou asked, moving aside a few feet to get away from the thick smell.

"They won't be easy to find," the little magus noted. "When you noticed the bounded field, what did it feel like to you? It's like a low-grade headache for me."

"It smells like old candy and rotten blood," Shirou answered cover his nose and glancing over toward where the smell was the strongest.

Rin just stared at for a few moments before answering. "You mean it's right here?" She looked around to make sure no one was watching before bending low and analyzing the area were Shirou was pointing. "It is! You mean you could actually tell where that was?"

"I thought you said you could feel it too," Shirou noted."I can feel the field," Rin corrected him. "Not the anchor!" She had a somewhat triumphant look to her face then. "We can actually do this. I was going to wait until Archer came back from wherever, but if you're this sensitive. We won't need him until we figure out which Master and Servant is doing this."

"Wait, wait. Are you saying Archer left you alone?" Shirou returned. "You don't know where he is."Rin winced a little bit at having let that slip.

"He's feeling a bit...ambivalent over the truce," Rin noted before quickly adding something of her own. "Saber's said the same things."

"But the only reason Saber's not three feet away from me right now is that I told her not to follow me," Shirou noted. "And Archer can drop the human form and watch you all the time without anyone noticing."

"Whatever," Rin said. "Let's focus on getting these things cut down a bit, or aren't you interested is saving everybody we know?"

She huffed and turned her back on him as she leaned down to the ground and started tearing apart the enchantment holding down the bounded field. As Rin worked, Shirou could feel the heaviest of the profane scent disappear, leaving only a general sort of smell of foulness over the area.

"You're right, you're right," Shirou agreed, calming down somewhat, but remembering to discuss it later. "Let's get to it."

"You track them down," Rin said smiling. "I'll tear them apart."

By the time school let out, they had successfully torn down a lot of the foundation of the bounded field. Rin wiped at her forehead, remembering the victory she had felt ten years ago. This was even better. This time, she'd been quick enough to stop them before they even knew they were in danger.

"Night's coming," Shirou noted, calling Rin's attention to the sky.

"Right, and we still don't know what Lancer's game is, or who his Master is," she added. "Best we get to safety. We'll find the central seal of the field tomorrow. It has to be somewhere we haven't looked."

"You think he's behind some of the other disappearances around town?" Shirou asked.

"I wouldn't be surprised," the little Magus responded. "Think about who he is. That sort of thing is right up his alley."

They started walking out of the gate as they were talking when the sound of a scream came to them and each whirled around toward the school and, without waiting for the other, dashed for it.

It was five minutes later that found himself chasing a figure that was staying just far enough ahead that he was only catching glimpses of her here and there. Somewhere behind him, Rin was attending to the girl they'd found passed out.

He saw enough to know that she was wearing black and had long purple hair, but not much more. The woman was inhumanly fast, and occurred to him briefly that he was chasing a Servant into some kind of trap. His suspicion started to grow when he took the chance to snatch a broom to make into something of a weapon and yet he didn't lose track of the woman.

His mind drifted to the Command seals on his hand and he considered Saber's earlier warning. Still, he didn't want to be jumping to calling someone else to do his fighting for him. Not yet, not until he was sure that he couldn't handle it on his own. It might be a mistake, and she might chew him out for it later, if Rin didn't first, but if it was something he could handle, she wouldn't ever know.

Unless Rin ratted him out. The last thing she'd told him to do when he'd taken off was to call Saber after all.

That started him thinking about the fact that Archer was still a no show. At that he shook off the side thoughts and focused again on the woman he was trying to catch up to. He followed her into the woods at the edge of the campus. From there it was only a minute before he turned into a copse and found the purple haired woman standing behind an eerily smiling Shinji.

"Hello, Shirou, we have a lot to talk about," the boy noted.

* * *

Saeko's still body twitched and suddenly drew in a heavy breath as Caster watched. The woman nodded and immediately, the Heroic Spirit bent herself to siphoning off the woman's life force again, eyeing the Grail as she did so. Her Master's body twitched and shuddered as the life left her and into Caster. It gave caster a bit more power, but given how Saeko's soul seemed out of final reach, the gain was minimal.

Meanwhile, the Grail saw a slight rippling, but not much more.

As the life left her Master's body, Caster considered reaching out to take the necklace that hung off of Saeko's neck. That was the item supplying Caster with her life after all, since apparently Saeko herself had no actual magic circuits or anything immediately compatible. The little bauble had an incredible amount of power and it was no relic that she had any knowledge of, clearly one of her many off-world baubles.

She had plenty of spells for more or less permanently dealing with unkillable entities, but she came back to the fact that the woman was trying to write herself out of the picture. She looked for the betrayal, but couldn't see it. Not yet at least. So she kept her betrayals minor for the moment. Relatively, at least.

"Well?" Saeko asked.

"Barely anything," Caster told her. "On both fronts."

Saeko slumped with a sigh as she sat up. That was one plan down the drain.

"What were you hoping by attempting to fill the Grail by yourself," Caster asked. "As you've said, the destruction of the Servant's physical form is barely an inconvenience for most and the seven of us produce plenty of power to fill the Grail."

"Hedging my bets," Saeko explained simply. "I would like as many trustworthy people of power to be present when the Angra Mainya kills me to prevent it from destroying anything else. Gilgamesh gives me a leeway of one Servant. The position of which is promised to you."

"By definition, I am no one to be trusted," Caster reminded her.

Saeko stood up and laid a hand on Caster's cheek. "It took the machinations of a goddess to bring you to your first betrayal. It wasn't a choice. It was a pure domination of your will, like an indelicate hand ripping a rose from its bush and dipping its thorns in poison. You are not twisted by nature. You were broken, like this Grail." She glanced toward the cursed container.

"And you seek to destroy that," Caster reminded her.

Saeko leaned in closer. "Humanity is far harder to destroy than a mere magical artifact, however powerful."

"I am not human," Caster reminded her.

"Well, that's an opinion," Saeko returned. Suddenly she noticed her proximity and stepped back from Caster. "Regardless, I promised to re-seed you to life and I my gardening does not easily fail."

Caster paused a moment before continuing.

"And if I am a poisoned rose, what are you Master?" she asked cattily.

"Aconite," Saeko said without hesitation. "What did you see when you were scrying?"

"Tohsaka and Emiya stalled Rider's Bloodfort, and her false master has made an offer of alliance to Emiya, who's already told both Tohsaka and his Servant," Caster noted.

"That's interesting," the Japanese woman noted. "I had thought the changes in their behavior would still be minor, but not matching one of the other routes so thoroughly. Is there anything else?"

"Saber knows that Berserker has fallen," Caster noted. Saeko looked interested suddenly there. "Which brings me to the question of what use that girl might be now that we have a more cooperative container acceptable to your morality quirks?"

"I have a way to take her off our hands," Saeko assured her.

"How did she handle the matter of her defeat?" Caster asked out of curiosity.

"She's still considering how she would do it again, I think," her Master responded. She looked at the paper. "These disappearances and 'gas leaks'. They don't seem significantly reduced from the previous timeline. I thought by partnering with you that I'd reduce the casualties more than this."

* * *

"Berserker is gone?" Rin said. "You're certain?"

"Archer seemed quite certain," Saber responded carefully.

Rin noted the woman was trying to be polite, but the disapproval for her Servant was clear in her affronted manner. The very fact that Archer wasn't here even now offended Saber more than almost anything else she'd seen affect the Spirit.

"What about his Master?" Shirou asked quickly.

"The mini-psycho that was hot to kill you?" Rin wondered. "You're worried about that?"

"She's still just a little girl," the young man reminded Rin. He was wrong, but they had no way of knowing Ilya's true age.

"There was no sign of blood, Miss Einzbern was not hurt on the scene," Saber assured him. "Though I must admit sharing some of Tohsaka's concern."

"Let's just focus on the matter at hand," Rin insisted.

"Rider," Saber agreed. "At least now we know who her Master is, even if we don't yet know who she is. And it helps that it seems that her Master is an incredible amateur."

Shirou grimaced at the characterization of Shinji, still surprised at how his long-time friend was behaving. Rin herself was trying not to bite her lip as old, old thoughts entered the back of her mind as she recalled things about the Matou family, and wondering about assumptions she had always made.

"I think it is best if we avoid school for now," Rin commented.

"Things are getting a little heated," Shirou admitted slowly. "It would probably be best for everyone if we avoided others for now."

Archer materialized into the room then and moved to sit at the table, ignoring the glares being leveled at him from Saber and Shirou. "You'll chase all the little fires and the war will continue to consume others."

"We are also denying the enemy resources in this manner," Saber protested. "If we take Rider down, that means two Servants dealt with."

"And if we go along in that regard, it still comes down to us eventually," Archer reminded.

"Besides all that," Rin snapped, ending her silence. "Where have you been all this time?"

"I have been looking for traces of our enemies, of course," he responded. "It was almost certainly Caster responsible for the defeat of Berserker. Though there is something strange about the battle-field. The prana is strange."

"You mentioned none of this before," Saber commented.

"You did not remain around after our conversation, did you?" Archer asked.

"Let's not get carried away here," Shirou responded. "We all have bigger enemies in front of us."

"Indeed," Saber agreed. "This is unseemly."

"There won't be a fight here," Rin confirmed, eying Archer. "It's late, we need to get to sleep. Tomorrow we have to make our excuses to Fujimura-sensei and Sakura."

* * *

Caster frowned at the empty circle in front of her. She knew that the ritual should have worked since that was apparently what would have happened had Saeko not appeared. And yet, she had no Servant of her own. There could only be one explanation for that, of course.

Someone else had summoned Assassin.

Either that was according to Saeko's plan, or it wasn't. It wouldn't be the first thing she'd found that was happening differently than the woman expected. The problem now was that she couldn't tell Saeko about it without revealing that she had made the attempt and, unlike some of those other things she'd discovered, the addition of a new Servant wasn't something she wanted to hide from her Master. This was going to take some creative thinking and alternative method of reinforcing her position.

* * *

The morning came and Sakura listened to Rin and Shirou telling everyone that they were planning to remain home for the next few days in order to deal with a rather vague something. She knew what they were talking about of course. She could still feel the hollow spaces that the Command seals had left when she'd granted them to her brother. Rin and Shirou were both mired in that battle, just like Rider given over to her brother. She took some comfort at least in the fact that she could still feel Rider's presence there.

She put on a smile and started to walk out into the living room to collect some of the dishes.

"Are you really sure that you have to stay home and deal with this...problem?" Taiga was asking.

"I am sure that neither Tohsaka-sempai nor Emiya-kun would lightly stay awa..." Sakura stopped and gasped, clutching at her arm and spilling a dish to the ground.

"Sakura!" Shirou called out, moving to his feet. "What happened?"

Even Rin reacted in a flash, much to Sakura's surprise, though the initial concern seemed to quickly fade back down.

"I...I just hit my funny bone is all," Sakura responded, trying to keep the tears from rising up to her face as the hollowness faded with her last connection to Rider.

She let the others fuss over her, minus Rin now that it looked as if things were minor. But she still wondered if maybe, whatever had happened to Rider, were somehow her fault.


	3. Chapter 3

_Moving kind of fast, I know...but the Fuyuki City part is pretty much intro._

* * *

Saeko always felt...odd about growing a body with no soul or even mind. She imagined it to be akin the feeling another woman might make when she knew she was going to miscarry but gets pregnant anyway. Maybe it was an understandable side effect of the fact that all her children had been homonculi and that having children had been the primary motivation for the use of this particular part of her inheritance.

Still it wouldn't be the first time that she had crafted a body for someone else to transfer themselves to.

Caster should have been there, to make it easier for Saeko to attune the body to her soul. But she wasn't. Saeko didn't know where the Servant was and was choosing not to worry about it.

It wasn't the idea that Caster couldn't betray her. The Servant had free will after all. And Saeko had used none of her command seals, preferring to use them as power ups.

Nor was it the arrogance of assuming that Caster couldn't turn the schemes back on her. It was a mistake to assume that the Servant was younger than her, as counting from the date she was alive would imply so. The Throne of Heroes was outside time and space. Saeko would likely never match Caster's true age when that infinity was taken into account. Even if Caster were only four or five thousand years old, she was at least as clever as Saeko, possibly more so.

It also wasn't the naïveté of believing Caster wouldn't betray her. Saeko knew well the addiction of betrayal. In all likelihood the woman was betraying her. Even knowing there wasn't much reason to.

It was a deliberate choice to trust Caster despite what her instincts were telling her. her instincts had betrayed her the past and she could afford to be the naive idealist. Or at least act the part.

Besides, she had her own secrets. Contingencies that she didn't want Caster knowing about and thus including in her plans.

The fewer people knew about the new player on the board the better.

The body was coming along well, so she turned to the vials of silvery liquid that held the main part of the knowledge she was leaving behind for the woman. Elixirs of pure memory such as she had prepared for other apprentices who could not simple inherit her knowledge the usual way for her kind.

For an added bonus the liquid memories were just knowledge and memories. They wouldn't freeze her body's condition the way Saeko's had been.

After another hour of work, she was aware of the buzzing of an alarm. Nodding she set the task aside and started to prepare the other site for the guests Caster would be inviting along. Assuming, of course, Caster was still sticking to the plan.

* * *

The original plan had called for Rin and Archer to hang back while Saber and Shirou approached Shinji and Rider for an apparent negotiation. Unfortunately, that had been mixed when they had started being swarmed by skeletal warriors.

"Where did these things come from?" Shirou demanded as he lifted the reinforced bokken in his hands to intercept the blade swinging down at his head.

"Summons, clearly!" Rin snapped as she set a gandr into the bones of another enemy. "I think suspect this is Caster."

Beside the two magi, their Servants were clearing through enemies by the dozen, but the numbers appeared to be endless. Saber simply cut through, suspicious of the way the endless hordes were pushing.

"These things are just a delay," Archer reasoned aloud, speaking everyone's thoughts.

Finally, they pushed towards the arranged rendezvous and found that a negotiation was already taking place. Rider was standing stiffly behind the irritated seeming Shinji as a second woman spoke in superior tones.

"My Master has already recovered the vessel of the Grail and removed Berserker," the woman noted. "While your patron uses you as a simple distraction for the others. You would be wise to turn your sights to our cause. All of you, in fact."

The woman in the robes turned around to smile at the newcomers.

Archer frowned as he looked toward the blindfolded Servant and then back to the one in Robes. There was surprise and no small amount of caution in his look. Though neither Rin nor the other two of their group could see his face to catch the fleeting look.

"Caster," Saber said as she stepped forward wielding her invisible blade.

Shinji for his part took in the appearance of Rin and her Servant. Immediately his face darkened. "Shirou! You brought her! I thought we were coming to an arrangement!"

"You're killing people, Shinji," the other boy replied. "It has to stop."

"That's what you're concerned with?" the boy responded. "The common rabble? Give me a break. I thought you knew better."

"He knows better than to get involved with the likes of you," Rin snapped.

"Children, children," Caster said. "You need not fight. Simply consider my author. After all who can stand if we unite Medusa," the still silent Rider flinched, "Arturia Pendragon," the woman added, drawing amazed stares from all as Saber bridled under the identification. "And, of course the esteemed Emiya and Tohsaka."

Archer narrowed his eyes as he flexed his fingers and looked toward Rin and Shirou were the his Master bridled at the implied insult and Shirou himself was simply focused on the witch in front of them.

She said the last with an errant flip of her hand as she looked away from Shirou's group to look where Shinji had been left out of the discussion entirely.

"And if the Masters refuse I make another offer to the Servants, join...my Master and seek the Grail with us," Caster finished.

"I would refuse such an offer," Rider snapped harshly, drawing a patronizing smile from Caster.

"It's my place to decide on who we ally with," Shinji snapped brandishing a book at his Servant.

"What do you mean that you have the vessel of the grail?" Shirou asked, feeling rather hesitant as he did so.

"Illysaviel Von Einzvern," Rin said darkly. "That's why you struck at Berserker first."

"I thought the Grail was a cup," Shirou said.

"Once upon a time, perhaps," Caster commented. "Now it is considered best to have a vessel that can protect itself."

"And what happens to the vessel?" Shirou asked.

"She'll be consumed by the Grail," Caster said casually. "Arturia should know. After all the same thing happened to the girl's mother. Didn't quite manage to protect her it seems."

Saber narrowed her eyes and lunged forward, slicing the blade towards Caster only to have the strike intercepted by a dagger attached to the end of a chain. The weapon wrapped about Saber's wrists and whipped her off target long enough for Caster to smile and fade away.

"Rider what are you doing?!" Shinji demanded of his Servant a moment before she shoved another dagger into his belly and twisting.

"Shinji!" Shirou called out as he darted forward. The chain lashed at him, shattering the reinforced bokken he carried and forcing him back.

"You're siding with Caster," Rin declared as Shinji's corpse fell to the ground and she unleashed a gandr against Rider.

The gorgon darted aside and them dodged the blade that dropped out of the sky to skewer her.

"That scum was never my True Master," Rider declared without stopping. She pulled on the chains to shift Saber out of position again and then ducked and weaved from Archer's twin blade attack. The massive level of Caster's prana compared to Rin's and Shirou's giving her just enough edge to survive the combined assault.

Then she leaped well back from the two spirits attacking her.

"I thought you said you'd refuse that offer," Saber chided. "But what should I expect but lies from Demons."

"I would refuse the offer," Rider snapped angrily. "But she didn't offer me anything! She just took!"

With that, the woman started to glow and, in a flash of brilliant light, she was gone, leaving behind a trail of destruction.

"We need to find out where they went if we're going to rescue that girl," Shirou responded.

"Archer!" Rin shouted. "Did you see where she went?"

"Briefly, West," Archer responded as he leaped up into the trees and looked in the direction the Gorgon had fled and then noted where she slowed down to drift down to the ground, the shape of her pegasus turning visible. "There, I have the approximate position."

He glanced towards Saber, remembering the comment Caster had made about her. "What did she mean about the girl's mother?"

"We might save that discussion until after the girl is safe," Saber said. Her tone of voice was subtly different from its normal serious tone, as if she were somehow nostalgic somehow. Or maybe as if she were thinking about atoning for something. "It is complex and personal. For you especially, Shirou. I would not want you distracted, or else you would do something foolish."

She frowned though.

"Yet it concerns me that Caster would know of those events," Saber noted. "Other Servants should not remember previous Grail Wars. Most especially given that she is not the Caster of that war."

"And how is it that you remember, Arturia?" Rin asked pointedly.

"My case is...special," she pointedly didn't explain. "But I agree with Shirou, we must save the girl."

"It is best that we keep such a prisoner under our control," Archer agreed, frowning. "I am curious how Caster knew any of that. Who Rider is. Who Saber is."

"The fact that Rider's true Master was not the one commanding her," Rin added. "Caster's Master is dangerously well-informed."

"Who was her Master if it wasn't Shinji?" Shirou asked as the others glanced towards him, quietly. "Breakfast. Sakura."

"Later," Rin insisted. "We have another task right now."

* * *

Saeko watched as Caster alighted and walked up to the entrance of their apparent lair. Shortly behind the magus, a beautiful winged horse landed and a beautiful, purple haired woman stepped off and marched up to stand behind Caster with an anger so palpable that it was visible.

"The girl's rescuers are on the way, Master" Caster assured Saeko. She watched the woman's eyes taking in Rider slowly, carefully.

Then Saeko looked toward her wordlessly, a sad, resigned look to her face before she turned away from the woman and started walking back to finish up her task.

That was the last response that Caster had expected from the woman. Anger against the rebellion, fear at what Medusa represented and maybe some respect or appreciation for the boldness of the coup. Or maybe an appreciation for how they now had more power to their side.

But silent resignation was not among them.

"Shall we find someth..."

"Have you explained to Rider what the situation is?" Saeko asked.

"I have given her some of the basics of the current situation," Caster responded.

"I've started on your project," Saeko informed her before turning to Rider, not giving Caster time to respond. "Shinji Matou?"

"Dead," Rider spat.

"Good, I suppose," the Japanese woman responded. "Sakura?"

"Alive and alone," Rider responded. "How do you know about her?"

"I know a few things," Saeko answered before turning to Caster. "How long do we have," Saeko asked, wearily.

"Maybe ten or fifteen minutes," Caster said.

"Let's make this a good show."

* * *

Illyasviel listened at the door as her "captors" talked. She couldn't hear what they were saying exactly, but it didn't matter to her. It looked like this little farce was almost over. She had her trump card now, such a trump card, and they hadn't even realized that she'd pulled that off. But she'd keep that well disguised.

For now, she'd play along with this woman's game and be the damsel in distress, either this obvious trap would work, which would have obvious advantages for her. Or the people coming would rescue her, and from what she saw of her onii-san, he was a bit soft-hearted. That would be an easier place to operate from than here under that woman's eyes.

"Only a few more minutes," Illyasviel said to herself.

* * *

The warehouse reeked of magic as they approached it. It was clearly the place. Actually, that made Shirou suspect it was a trap.

"We must hurry," Saber said, mouth firmed and eager to be moving. "We cannot allow her to remain in enemy hands."

"Let's be careful," Shirou said. "She has some way to steal the contracts of Servants. We don't want to be the next on her list."

"It's a dagger, rather awkward looking," Archer commented. "Avoid getting close to her."

"How do you know that?" Rin asked then, though Archer didn't respond.

"Beware Rider's eyes," Saber added, though it was clear that she was impatient to move.

Shirou considered again that the small woman was taking this very personal.

"Okay, Saber, lead the way," Shirou said.

"Wait a minute, why are you calling the shots," Rin asked.

"I'm not, Saber is," Shirou corrected.

"Bu..." Rin stopped and sighed. "Fine, King Arthur, go ahead."

"Then we move now and move fast," Saber noted. "Night has fallen and Lancer may have finished setting his domain by now. Shirou and Rin, stay back and support us. Eyes out for Caster."

They moved swiftly down toward the warehouse, Saber slashing open the gates, to give them access. Almost immediately they were set upon by hordes of skeletal figures, with no sign yet from Rider or Caster. The skeletons fell quickly, and the main doors exploded into splinters as one of Archer's daio slashed through them followed by the other.

Saber and Archer came upon the sight of Rider waiting for them amidst a rather sparse workspace scattered with a number of odd looking items here and there. Probably some sort of Mystic Code or other experimentation, but there was something a bit off about them.

Rider's chain slashed about pushing Saber's charge to an abrupt stop as she blocked the attack and tried to pull back on the woman's weapon to unbalance her. The second swung around as Saber pushed forward, only to be nailed to the wall by a sword.

"I have Rider handled," Archer said. "Get the girl."

"You're not operating alone with Caster around," Saber cautioned.

"I'll stay," Rin shouted, "I'm his master anyway." She started casting gandrs around to keep the skeletons from attacking Archer's back, her eye looking to find Caster's next appearance.

"Are you really certain that you have me handled?" Rider asked, leaping around and freeing her weapon as she tried to cut off Shirou's and Saber's move. Perhaps she was a bit less eager than she could have been. Her action was cut off by more summoned swords that forced Rider out of the way.

Shirou and Saber charged further into the building, looking for any sound of the person they were looking for. They turned a corner and watched as two cones of light wrapped up from strange metal boxes on the wall connected to wires in the hands of simple Japanese woman. The cones seemed to stop Saber cold for a moment, but she started pushing forward, feeling some sort of drain as the things tried to pull her in two directions.

"You really aren't quite a Spirit, are you?" the Japanese woman suggested.

"You, you're Caster's master, aren't you?" Shirou demanded.

"Where's Irisviel's daughter?" Saber growled out with effort.

"That still must hurt quite a bit," Saeko noted.

Saber growled determinedly and pushed through the cones of light, Shirou tentatively following through and finding the light did nothing. The blade of Excalibur, still covered by the Invisible Air, slipped up through the air to come to rest at Saeko's throat, not seeming to concern her at all.

"Where's the girl?" Saber demanded.

"You realize she's useless to you," Saeko noted.

"If she's so useless than turn her over," Shirou responded.

"Where would be the fun in that?" the woman asked.

Shirou stopped and picked up a smell from the hallway. "She's this way, I recognize her scent from when we fought."

"Then all we have left is to handle this woman then," Saber noted.

"Please try," Saeko suggested with a smile as she raised her hands and closed her eyes. A small black object in her hand, something like a pen. Saber brought up her sword cutting into the woman's neck just as the black pen flashed a light in the hallway.

In the next moment, the woman was gone, and Saber was looking around trying to see where she had gone. She noticed Shirou still looking dazed and reached out to shake him out of the daze. "Shirou, let's go!"

He nodded. "Right, this way!"

From there it was a short run to the door and pushing it open to find the little white-haired girl sitting inside. "Well it took you long enough, onii-san." She said, crossing her arms. "I've been here days."

* * *

Rider's head shifted aside as she dodged another barrage from Archer and then, almost without warning, she leaped back out a hole in the wall and vanished into the night.

"What the hell was that all of a sudden?" Rin asked as she moved toward the hole. "Did Caster even show up?"

"I don't think that was their plan," Archer noted as he came up behind Rin.

"Oh and what do you think was the plan?" Rin wondered.

"Doesn't really matter," Archer commented as he traced a zig-zagging red dagger in his hand.

"Why no...AIGmmmph!" Rin shrieked as the Rule Breaker stabbed into her shoulder and then Archer covered her mouth. She felt her command seals breaking away from her in shock.

"I am sorry about this Rin," Archer said. "But I can end this right now."

Archer then shoved her hard into the wall, knocking her unconscious briefly. He traced back to where the other two of their party had gone and set himself to wait. Predictably, Saber came through the door first, and he raised the blade in his hand.

"Saber, look out!" Rin called out. Immediately, Shirou, pushed the King of Knights ahead, putting himself in the line for Archer's stab. Like when it had pierced Rin, he felt the Rule Breaker tearing apart his command seals. Almost instantly, Saber started to collapse as the force maintaining her connection to the world was ripped away. It didn't instantly cripple her, but it slowed her down enough for Archer's other hand to slash a sword into and through the side of her armor.

A moment later, more swords manifested driving the weakened King of Knights backward.

"Saber or you. The results are the same," Archer snarled as he dissipated his Rule Breaker and slashed out with a new sword to cut across Shirou's stomach.

"Onii-san!" Illya shouted.

"What the hell are you doing?" Shirou demanded before he felt a kick into his face sending him down the hall.

"I'm ending this farce before anybody else dies," Archer explained as he looked toward Illyasviel.

"K...Assassin! I revoke my command!" Illya shouted. "Help!"

Suddenly there was a tall, dark-haired man in a trench coat pointing a massive gun at the back of Archer's head. "Archer...don't make me kill one of my children to save two others."

Archer's eyes narrowed as he heard the voice and recognized it. "I can end this right here and now."

"No, you can't, your sister isn't the Vessel anymore, she's just a Master," Assassin answered. "And killing Shirou ends nothing."

Shirou leaned up from the ground and stared at the new figure, trying to get a good view.

"Do you think that you can stop me, Assassin?" Archer asked. "I'm one of the knightly classes. How effective do you expect that gun to be?"

"I'd rather not find out."

The sound of chanting came to them then, and eyes tracked to where Rin had struggled to Saber's side and power was flowing back into Arturia's body.

"How about two Servants, bastard!" Rin shouted, holding her shoulder as Saber started to recover herself.

Saber's eyes angrily flicked from Archer, to Shirou, to Assassin and wrapped her hand tightly around her hilt, waiting for an order.

"It's good to hear you again," Archer responded as he vanished into the ether.

Then Excalibur was once again aiming toward someone's throat, though not so closely. "Kiritsugu Emiya."

"Saber."

"Dad?"

"DAD!?" Rin gasped. "Assassin is your dad?!"

"Our Dad, thank you," Illya reminded the injured magus.


	4. Chapter 4

"We can't stay here," Kiritsugu said, not giving Saber's blade much attention, but looking toward Rin and Shirou instead.

The sharp way Saber's eyes darted to both, taking her eyes off him even a moment, gave some credence to the files Caster's Master had. There was already an attachment between Saber and the two teens, similar to what had existed between his wife and Saber, perhaps, when they went were in the Fourth War.

"Rin, how fare you?" Saber asked.

"I can stand," Rin said, and Shirou looked to the developing bruise on her face, from where Archer had slammed her into the wall. His eyes looked toward Saber and the injury in her side, but she was still standing firm and easy, staring at Kiritsugu.

"I've got Rin," Shirou said, standing up with a grimace. His impact in the wall must not have hurt him as much as he'd thought, because he got up with no difficulty.

"I told you, I can stand," Rin responded harshly as she started to try to push herself up despite the way her head was spinning.

"I'm ready to go," Illyasviel responded as she stood up and dusted herself off.

Shirou walked past Kiritsugu, Assassin, carefully, eying Illya and his father. The little girl was no longer so helpless and harmless now that she a Master again. He was at Rin's side then and started to pick her up, pausing as he felt the wetness and pulled back his hand to find it wet with blood. He looked toward the wound in her shoulder and glared out toward the hole in the wall.

"Shirou, what are you doing?" Rin demanded. "I can take..."

"Let Shirou carry you, Rin, we don't have time," Saber remarked, turning to face her sharply. "Most of the participants of the Grail War were here. It won't be long before some of the other come along and Archer has left us weakened."

"Fine," Rin said irritably, or maybe weakly. "Let's get this over with."

"We'll go to the house," Shirou determined quickly, starting to walk back. "Let's go. Everyone."

Kiritsugu smiled briefly at the way Shirou took charge.

"That's fine with me," Illya said with a shrug.

* * *

Saeko arrived at the second site last and did so cautiously, looking for signs that Caster truly had turned on her. She walked through the hallway and into the first room, finding Rider there.

"She's set you to guard duty, I assume," Saeko asked.

"She has," Rider responded. "You don't approve of this do you?"

"I understand the addiction of it," the Japanese woman responded.

"And what can you understand about it, mortal?" Medusa demanded.

"Do you know what a fetch is?" Saeko asked. "It's not a story from your neck of the woods, so I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't?"

"Something Japanese?" Medusa asked.

"No, Northern European," the woman responded. "It is, essentially, you."

"Me?" Rider asked with a cynical air.

"A you that never got to be, you," she clarified. "A more vicious you, with fewer redeeming qualities. A jealous you that sees that you have the things it always wanted. And this other you feels that it deserves these things that belong to you."

"I can't imagine anything that would be jealous of my situation," Rider noted.

"This is mostly normal people that have fetches," Saeko admitted. "Still, there are a number of entities that would kill worlds to be you."

Rider snorted in doubt. "And what do these fetches do?"

"They watch you, they brood, they plan, they stalk you," the woman continued. "Sometimes you might catch them out of the corner of your eyes and you convince yourself you saw a reflection or a near image or something like that. Eventually, after studying them long enough, the fetch waits for an opportunity and..."

She shrugged and held out her hands. "Then there's just the fetch and it steps into your life. Sleeps with your spouse, takes care of your children, chats with your friends. The problem is that the fetch is not you, it's just almost you. Eventually, someone starts to ask questions, and maybe there are traces of you left behind that it didn't get rid of. And then more people have to disappear to protect the fetch's appropriated life. Eventually, the fetch gets down to your family."

She paused to look at her collar and brush at the blood there.

"Then that perfect life is gone," Saeko noted. "The fetch can't figure out why everything went so wrong. Then they move on to the next you. Most never realize that they're a monster."

"You're the fetch," Rider reasoned.

"Oh, for a long time," Saeko confirmed with a nod, "and I had an easier time of it than most. My other me's tend to be a little cracked as it is. The two of you at least have external forces to blame your fall on."

Saeko walked to the next door and stopped to look back toward Rider.

"Do you have any idea what I would do to be _you?" _she paused and tilted her head upward. "Or _you_?"

"Are you threatening me?" Rider asked casually. "Because you, are not my Master."

"No," Saeko commented. "And I shouldn't bother. I'm not sure what Heroic Spirits are, entirely, just what some of the literature theorizes they are. It's never quite the same as what the lore says. I can't tell for sure if you're part of the Rider that fell in love with Sakura Matou, or the one that was with Shirou Emiya...or the Rider that was with both of them...or if all those Riders were each a separate being copied off the same source."

"In love with..." Rider wondered, sitting up.

Saeko winced at the slip. "That was cruel, my apologies."

Rider was disdainfully silent as Saeko moved deeper into the building, until she found Caster looking into her crystal ball.

"Enjoy the show?" Saeko asked. "More putting me in my place? The tiny little mortal who stumbled into eternal life and wants to end it? Like watching me lecture another of your peers? Flaunting someone with a weapon that maybe couldn't kill me but almost certainly could destroy me?"

"Archer betrayed Tohsaka and Emiya," Caster said simply, cutting off the woman's rant. "Illyasviel is a Master again, of Assassin."

She quieted instantly.

"How did Archer do it?" Saeko asked setting aside her temper for the moment.

"He must have seen me use Rule Breaker on Rider," Caster responded.

"Then he has two days to kill Emiya," the Japanese woman responded. "We'll need to keep our eyes open for him. Everything in the available research I have says that Shirou Emiya is always involved in the final destruction of the Grail. Your world runs on concepts and the concept seems to be that Emiya Shirou is the Grail's nemesis."

"Or Rin Tohsaka," Caster noted. "And at least one Servant aiding them."

"The one time Rin seemed to destroy the Grail, it was actually Saber and Archer," Saeko countered. "Rin is instrumental in insuring it never comes back afterwards, but the death blow is always dealt by Emiya."

"You haven't asked about Assassin yet," Caster noted.

"You're correct," Saeko noted. "I haven't asked about him. Incidentally, your body will be ready soon. When it is, you can be free of this all, if you want. Move on to your own life for once. Let me take on Rider at the time and I'll carry on with her."

Caster looked up from her crystal ball and glanced toward Saeko.

"My deal with you was to see it through to your death, and the destruction of the Grail," Caster noted.

"Yes, well, this is better for you, isn't it?" Saeko asked as she left the room.

* * *

Rin struggled to keep conscious as she was carried through the streets, holding tightly onto Shirou and watching Saber pace them, eyes checking the shadows as they moved along. She started to focus herself on keeping an eye on Assassin and his Master, the girl they had been planning to rescue.

She was unconscious by the time they reached Emiya's house.

"Take care of Tohsaka," Kiritsugu said. "I'll take watch."

"And why should I trust you?" Saber asked.

"Saber, that's my father," Shirou told her. "He..."

"Wouldn't hurt you...if he didn't have to," the King of Knights responded. "But Rin and I are different. I doubt he can take me in a stand up fight, but that is not his way."

"This is still my house," Shirou noted. "And My father's house. So we'll trust him tonight."

"I am opposed to this," Saber noted with a glare.

"When Rin is awake, there are things we must talk about," Kiritsugu noted.

* * *

Rin woke up in the guest room with a brief start. Sitting up, she looked to her shoulder and the bandages there as well as those around her head. A flush started to come over her face as she imagined Shirou treating her wounds.

"No, no," she commented. "It would have to be Saber...except Saber would want to keep an eye on Assassin...so it was Shirou...but Saber wouldn't...it's not proper. But she is a soldier first...so she'd want to guard the potential enemy and let someone else bind the wound. No, no, Saber would make sure that I wouldn't be vulnerable like that in front of...she's...she's King Arthur, the patron of chivalry. She...she was married to a woman and had a baby with her sister..."

Rin's face blushed firmly red as she realized that there was almost no way that she wasn't naked in front of someone who potentially found the female body attractive. She took a deep breath, relased it and then took another.

"Let's keep this rational," Rin decided. "I'll simply ask who bandaged me, and then I'll know how to handle it."

She stood up and walked to her closet to search through her clothes and get dressed before she walked out into the main portion of the house. She looked outside as she walked and saw that the sun was just coming up outside. They'd made their attack not too late into the night and she wasn't sure what time it was exactly when they had started back.

She walked past Shirou sleeping at against a wall, remembering that he had been injured too. She kneeled down to check him, but found that the injuries were gone. Just like after Berserker had attacked them at the graveyard, he was healed.

Rin's eyes glanced up then as she noted Saber sitting and staring out toward the living room where Assassin was apparently meditating and Illyasviel was sleeping. Saber turned around to look at her and showed a clear relief.

"Rin," Saber sighed. "It is good to see you awake."

"Thanks, Saber," she responded before glancing toward Assassin.

"Illyasviel has been a perfect guest," Saber stated, turning back to look at Kiritsugu. "Assassin has done nothing either."

"Tohsaka," Kiritsugu noted. "Wake up Shirou, we have things to talk about." He turned over to nudge Illya gently until she woke up and stretched.

"Ahh, good morning," Illyasviel said cheerily. "Are we ready then, Kiri?" She looked toward Rin. "Oh she's awake."

Shirou woke with a sudden start that caused Rin to grab hold of him tight, hoping to calm him down. "Rin, oh, you're all right."

"Yeah, about that do you know..." Rin paused and looked around the room with a slight flush and then her eyes narrowed as she took a look into the room. "Never mind. Let's get to this meeting your father wants to have."

"I'd advise you take everything Assassin has to say with caution," Saber commented as Rin and Shirou moved to sit beside her.

"If you don't mind," Kiritsugu suggested. "I'd like to check something first."

"Go ahead," Shirou said with a careful shrug, half of him wanting to spend the entire day talking to his father about what his life had been like. And asking about the white-haired girl that was apparently his sister. Which was rather strange since she didn't look older than him.

Kiritsugu looked toward Tohsaka. "Ten years ago, Tohsaka, did you track down a man who was kidnapping children?"

Rin's eyes widened and she straightened. "How do you know about that?"

"Rin," Saber snapped turning to look at her Master with concern. "Did you face the Fourth War's Caster...as a child?"

"It was a man with an amulet," Rin corrected. "Not a Servant."

"There was a creature," Kiritsugu suggested.

Rin shivered and nodded.

"That's another thing she knows," Illyasviel sighed.

"That who knows?" Rin asked. "Who told you about that?"

"Caster's Master," Kiritsugu suggested.

"Someone's been playing with one of Zeltrech's toys," Illyasviel said.

"What, you're saying she uses the Second Magic?" Rin asked.

"We're saying either she's been using it or she's a result of it," Kiritsugu clarified.

"What's the Second Magic?" Shirou asked.

"It's deals with alternate realities," Rin said. "What you're saying that she knows these things because she's from an alternate reality when things like this went differently?"

Kiritsugu pulled a book out of his pocket and tossed it to Shirou, he picked it up and looked at the stylized drawings on the cover as Rin turned to see what it was. "What is that?"

"It's the instruction guide to a video game," Shirou told her.

"Is that supposed to be us?" Rin asked.

"What foolishness is this?" Saber asked.

"Apparently, in some reality somewhere," Illyasviel commented with an air of immense distaste. "The Fifth Grail War is a form of entertainment. And our opponent has played it and studied our world. Extensively."

"So, what, she's some sort of crazy fan?" Shirou asked. "That wanted to be a part of this?"

"It's not as simple as that," Kiritsugu commented.

"I told you to beware what Assassin says," Saber added. "This is ridiculous. What does this supposed game say about the results of this war."

"What we're told is that in almost every ending," Illyasviel noted. "You three choose and succeed at destroying the Grail."

"What?!" Rin demanded. "Why would I want to destroy the Grail? It's the gateway to the Third Magic."

"I also have need of it," Saber added harshly. "And I have been betrayed in my quest once before."

"What has Saber told you about the end of the Fourth War?" Kiritsugu asked Shirou.

"She doesn't talk about that much," the younger Emiya admitted. "But Kotomine said that an unworthy Master touched the grail and his wish brought disaster."

"That was not what happened," the King of Knights noted. "In the last moments I battled against the Archer of that tournament and what I hoped would be my Master bringing me victory turned to betrayal when I was ordered to destroy the Grail rather than my enemy."

Shirou looked toward Kiritsugu questionably. "You're the unworthy Master? What was your wish?"

"The wish I was to achieve was to acquire the Third Magic," he commented. "The wish I wanted was a peaceful life with my family."

"Then one must ask Assassin why destroy the grail?" Saber demanded, looking to Rin. "And condemn Irisviel to death and your daughter to unknown fates!"

""Because of the way the Grail would complete that wish," Kiritsugu answered. "It would kill everything else on the planet, leaving me with my family. And then it would make me choose between them."

"The Grail, the ritual, the whole thing is corrupted," Illyasviel said. "It's not the door to the Third Magic any longer. It can't grant anything but death any more."

"Illyasviel," Saber said, looking to the little girl. "I ask you to consider that Assassin..."

"I trust Kiri," Illyasviel responded firmly. She shuffled uncomfortably. "And I feel...better now that I'm not its Vessel. I've done my own research into the Grail Wars since as far back as the end of the last one. Evil Heroes were not permitted by the original ritual. It wasn't until after the third that things changed."

"They decided to make the Grail Vessel a living being," Rin noted, looking to Illya. "Human sacrifice."

"Demons summoned to the battle," Saber added reluctantly. "Medusa, both Caster..."

"Whatever, what does this lady want?" Shirou asked.

"She wants to activate the Grail just long enough for it to kill her," Illyasviel told them. "And then for someone else to destroy it."

"There are easier ways for a person to kill themselves than apparently genocidal artifacts," Rin noted dryly.

"While she was fighting Berserker," Illya noted. "I saw her bodily dismembered and crushed and split in two. She should have died fifteen times before Caster knocked me unconscious." She most certainly didn't admit to being hypnotized. "She recovered almost immediately each time."

"Saber, can you...?"

"I can fight to disable, and without depending on injury to do it," the Servant told Shirou. "This is no problem. What I wonder is what you and your Assassin intend to do, assuming this is correct, Illyasviel?"

"Kiritsugu wants to track down the Grail and destroy it before anybody can power it enough to activate it," Illyasviel answered. "And I'm willing to do that."

"I'm willing to help as well," Shirou noted.

"Yay! Onii-san!" Illyasviel cheered happily, launching herself across the room to hug her brother. Rin tried to intercept but stopped with a wince as she moved.

"Now hold on there! Not three days ago you were trying to kill him!" Rin snapped angrily. "And if your mother died in the last war isn't he your younger brother?"

"That was then," Illya responded, sticking her tongue out.

Kiritsugu smiled briefly at Illyasviel's antics and Rin's reactions. Saber watched him intently, unwilling to take her eyes off of him until she saw that rare slip of tenderness that she'd seen with Irisviel. She knew enough now not to trust it entirely, but still, she trusted that enough to turn toward the scene.

"Shirou, Rin," she said. "Illyasviel. There are still serious matters to discuss. Kindly behave appropriately."

"It's all right, Saber," Shirou tried to calm her down.

"It most certainly is not," Rin and Saber said at once.

* * *

It wasn't particularly wise, but Saeko had to get away from Caster and Rider both as she tried to get a handle on how things had developed. Things had mostly been going as planned. Gilgamesh should be making a move soon. The second battle with caster usually brought Gilgamesh out onto the field. Unfortunately, she'd just have to avoid that fight. There was nothing that she had to deal with the King of Heroes. She could survive him, but Caster and Rider couldn't.

She stopped as the whip in her jacket started to feel warm and alighted upon a roof top, glancing around. "Something remind of someone, Sara?" She wasn't sure the soul within the whip could actually hear anything she said, but just in case, she liked to think that the companionship was appreciated.

It didn't make much sense, however, for the whip to be reacting to anything. It was broad daylight, after all. Most of the whip's enemies couldn't operate during the day. Unfortunately it was the strongest of the lot that could. And it was that thought crossed her mind that the roof around her flashed red and a series of pikes pierced up out of open air into her body, lifting her up off her feet. She gasped and writhed angrily at the pain, as her body healed around the manifested pikes holding her up helpless.

"You're the woman that would fight Servants," a cultured voice noted as a pale, white-haired figure in dark, royal clothing stepped out into the woman's view. "There aren't many humans who can. I applaud you woman! You are a bold so no doubt."

Saeko coughed and tried to answer, but the hacking as her lungs tried to breathe around a pike was all that she could get out.

"I apologize for the welcome," the man said as he walked up toward her regally, hands behind his back. "My Master is a stickler for making a point, and he felt this would be an adequate way to do so."

As he said that, Saeko's eyes widened and she lifted her head to stare at him in dawning horror. She opened her mouth and spat out blood which immediately flowed back to her wounds.

"Most intriguing, I can see how that would be problematic for Berserker," the man in front of her said as he watched the way her body kept trying to heal with the pikes in standing in the wounds. "In any case, my Master has given this distasteful task to me. Go back to whatever pit or happily-ever-after fairy tale spawned you. The Grail is claimed."

The man reached up to wipe at her forehead as she stared at him stricken and then he started to walk away.

"I hope this is farewell, I'd rather not be asked to take this task again," he said over his shoulder as he leaped down off the roof.

It was a few minutes before the pikes vanished, allowing Saeko to drop to the roof and heal. Still, all she could do was stare at the place where the white-haired man, Lancer, had been and ponder what she had just realized. It was a long few minutes before she could speak. "Another Traveler. There's another Traveler?"


End file.
